Perspectives: Ways of Knowing - Imagination & Intuition

Join us at 11:30AM February 8th and 15th after worship for a two-part Perspectives series led by our own Connie Swanson!

For decades, the work of some physicians, philosophers, physicists and neuroscientists, proffered a solid claim that beyond the offer of reason and science as ways of knowing, intuition and imagination also exist as ways for us to know reality. In other words, epistemology now opens to include more of who we humans are. 

Across disciplines, we see human beings using these ways of knowing. Theologians and mystics say that imagination is a discipline that allows us to see more reality, the reality of God’s kingdom on earth, to reach from our finite experience toward the infinite. The physicist, Rana Adhikari, describes ways imagination and art have shaped the way he thinks about physics and what he added to the emerging science of black holes. The poet, Colerige, identified Primary Imagination as “a representation in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM,” and he adds, Secondary Imagination, “… differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation.” Pastors and Spiritual Directors notice the crucial nature of our senses, our intuition and imagination for the work of prayer and efforts to renew the mind, and crucially for building our communities with care.

For week 2, we will respond to questions of how we use both the analytic and creative brain that includes both conscious and unconscious processes.